90 OF THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING. [l. 6. 



he be crossed, nor Proteus ever changed shapes till he 

 was straitened and held fast ; so the passages and vari 

 ations of nature cannot appear so fully in the liberty of 

 nature as in the trials and vexations of art. 



II. i. For civil history, it is of three kinds; not un 

 fitly to be compared with the three kinds of pictures 

 or images. For of pictures or images, we see some are 

 unfinished, some are perfect, and some are defaced. So 

 of histories we may find three kinds, memorials, perfect 

 histories, and antiquities ; for memorials are history un 

 finished, or the first or rough draughts of history ; and 

 antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of his 

 tory which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time. 



2. Memorials, or preparatory history, are of two sorts ; 

 whereof the one may be termed commentaries, and the 

 other registers. Commentaries are they which set down 

 a continuance of the naked events and actions, without 

 the motives or designs, the counsels, the speeches, the 

 pretexts, the occasions and other passages of action : for 

 this is the true nature of a commentary (though Csesar, 

 in modesty mixed with greatness, did for his pleasure 

 apply the name of a commentary to the best history of 

 the world). Registers are collections of public acts, as 

 decrees of council, judicial proceedings, declarations and 

 letters of estate, orations and the like, without a perfect 

 continuance or contexture of the thread of the narration. 



3. Antiquities, or remnants of history, are, as was said, 

 tanquam tabula naufragii : when industrious persons, by 

 an exact and scrupulous diligence and observation, out of 

 monuments, names, words, proverbs, traditions, private 

 records and evidences, fragments of stories, passages of 

 books that concern not story, and the like, do save and 

 recover somewhat from the deluge of time. 



